Polish MP Heats Anti-Gay Union Debate

WARSAW—A Polish member of parliament has deepened the country’s increasingly acrimonious public debate over allowing gay couples some of the legal rights enjoyed by heterosexuals, suggesting that to do so could lead to pedophiles asking to legalize sex with children.

The MP, John Godson, is part of a large group of ruling Civic Platform party MPs who in January toppled legislation that would have recognized gay unions.

“Today we’re talking about [same-sex civil unions], tomorrow about gay marriage and adoption of children. The question is where we stop? Maybe the day after tomorrow there’ll be a pedophile lobby fighting for the age of consent to be lowered,” Mr. Godson said in a television interview Monday night.

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Poland’s former president, Lech Walesa, caused uproar last week by saying homosexuals shouldn’t seek more rights because they are a small minority. Mr. Godson agreed, saying legislation is being pushed by “a homosexual lobby” that in some other countries, like France, won the right for gay couples to adopt children.

Mr. Walesa last week said homosexuals shouldn’t demonstrate in public and in this way “coax” his children and grandchildren. Gay legislators should sit on the back benches, or even “behind a wall,” he said.

His comments were slammed by Robert Biedron, a gay-rights campaigner and MP in Poland’s anticlerical Palikot Movement opposition party. The party’s leader, Janusz Palikot, this week said Mr. Biedron and Anna Grodzka, a transsexual lawmaker, would sit on the front benches in the house during this week’s session.

A shipyard electrician, Mr. Walesa’s name is synonymous with Poland’s battle to shake off communist rule in the 1970s and 1980s, winning him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983. He served as the country’s president when communism fell in the former Soviet bloc in 1989.

He was unrepentant this week, saying he won’t change his mind or apologize because “practically the entire nation supports me” on this matter.

According to opinion polls, most Poles oppose allowing same-sex couples to register their partnerships.

Comments (5 of 5)

Even in the era of Poland's Golden Liberty, Jan Zamoyski and Stanislaw Zolkiewski pursued negative liberty while Mikolaj Zebrzydowski and later, ironically, King Zygmunt III Wasa positive liberty. The latter ruined the Republic.

11:14 pm March 6, 2013

Jan wrote:

Having friends that are LGBTs as I do and putting expanding their social rights high on the list of priorities are different questions. Perhaps, in addition to the majority-minority controversy, Mr Walesa and Mr Godson, who is Poland’s first African-origin MP, are against those MPs with single-issue agenda as Mr Walesa and Mr Godson obviously believe, and I do 100% agree, that the Parliament is the place to discuss and decide comprehensive polices.

The Palikot Movement does not seem like a responsible political party but just an alliance of single-issuers, having inherent serious contradictions as characteristic to the philosophy of ‘positive liberty’. Abusing positive liberty is dangerous. Radicalism – whether liberalism or anti-liberalism – will do no good to the society.

On the contrary, the philosophy of ‘negative liberty’ is one of the important values inherent in a healthy human society, which, as long as I observe from outside of Poland, Civic Platform has long been in pursuit of as Burkian conservatives (or Burkian liberalists). This is why this political party is unique in today’s world, and only Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party with its 2010 party platform is its peer while the Chinese and Koreans allege that the Burkean conservative party is far-right and thus totalitarian (Who are in fact far-right and totalitarian after all?). Only is it that Mr Walesa always tends to use his own words – not academic or pedantic ones – to explain his own view on democracy and liberalism to be misunderstood by the public, but calm minds will find his view on democracy and freedom to be right as a gradualist or anti-radical. He needn’t apologise. He shouldn’t apologise at all, or his apology will harm the society in the long run.

Whether the conduct of LGBT is sinful or not is about personal philosophy, and this question is wide of the mark this time.

6:24 pm March 5, 2013

Soul wrote:

When souls similar to John Godson make similar statements - I often ask them, "really? Who? Where. Please provide first-hand examples of the people you talk about. Until you have first-hand examples, your statements hold no value.'

John Godson - when you speak, speak from knowing.

5:19 pm March 5, 2013

Frank37072 wrote:

Ignorance becomes so tiresome.

4:58 pm March 5, 2013

Boarderthom wrote:

Whether you are a Christian who believes that homosexuality is a sin (not all do), or a gay rights activist working for equal access to civil rights (getting a marriage license from your county courthouse is a civil right), it seems we all need to go through a process of forgiveness and reconciliation. As the Dalai Lama has said, "All of us want to be happy. No one wants to suffer. If we act and behave with that in mind, then it will be a good thing".

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